


Blue's Your Color

by Cotton_Candy_and_Sprinkles



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Arc Reactor, Fluff, How Do I Tag, M/M, Match-Making Avengers, Steve is too dramatic, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Tony is all-knowing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cotton_Candy_and_Sprinkles/pseuds/Cotton_Candy_and_Sprinkles
Summary: Steve Rogers most definitely loved Tony Stark.(Loved him like a brother).Or, Steve's a bit too angsty for his own good (and maybe a bit oblivious too) and the Avengers refuse to sit by quietly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first time posting something here, so I'm a little nervous but really excited too! Thanks!

Steve loved Tony. 

(Loved him like a brother). 

Steve loved Tony the way he loved the entire rag-tag team, something familial and comfortable and safe. Just like Steve loved Natasha’s spunk, Clint’s snark, Thor’s naivete (for a God, he sure had a lot), and Banner’s clumsiness. 

He loved Tony’s smile. 

For one.

He loved how when Tony would crack one, a real one, not the media - pleasing one he’d come to perfect after years of living in the spotlight, the room seemed brighter, the colors louder. And Tony’s laugh? He could listen to that forever, soundtrack of his life, no doubt (friends thought that of friends, right? Right?). 

He loved Tony’s brain.

The man was a genius, and sure Tony bragged about it to no ends, but he really wasn’t doing himself any justice, Steve would come to realize. He couldn’t even bother to understand any of the technology, but whenever he’d see other scientists drooling like apes at Tony’s designs (kind of like him when he first saw a StarkPhone) he’d feel a sense of pride, chest swelling, head-raising kind of pride that made his face flush redder than the stripes on his shield. 

He loved Tony’s gentleness.

That one took a bit longer to notice. In the beginning, he was Tony Stark, ex-warmonger, aggravated playboy, arrogant jerk (pardon the swear-word), every bit the media had painted him to be. He stabbed Banner in the sides with an electronic zapper, hacked into SHIELD files, and his presence was so loud Steve’s ears would physically hurt (Bruce said it was psychological - nobody’s presence could literally cause ear pains - but it’s Tony Stark and he defied every law of science). But then he flew a nuke into Space and opened the Stark tower to the Avengers with welcome arms as if every confrontation between him and Steve never happened. It didn’t make sense, and Steve wasn’t the only one subtly waiting for some evil end-game to reveal itself, a hidden purpose for Stark’s generosity, but bit by bit they started noticing things. Like how Stark, usually blasting his horrible rock music throughout the floors from his workshop, would work in complete silence during the early morning, when Natasha would dance, or how he would litter the flats with scented candles for Bruce to handle the big guy. It was subtle, and gentle, and it wasn’t so he’d be noticed, appreciated, praised. It was because he cared, and it turned out that Stark cared more than they could have imagined. He cared when he installed the art studio in Steve’s floor, when he had a shooting range for Clint, when he wouldn’t even entertain the notion of sleep so that Natasha’s gear was a hundred times safer, better, faster. It was hard, Steve realized, to not love Tony Stark. 

(Love him like a brother). 

 

It was a normal mission, approach disillusioned bad guy, easily disarm, and make it back in time for Friends reruns, when all of a sudden Tony wasn’t responding on Comms and the eerie stillness in the air started to seem less like a victory and more like the calm before a storm. 

“Does anyone have eyes on Tony? I repeat, does anyone have eyes on Tony?”

He waited with bated breath, scanning his surrounding scrutinizingly as he tried to make out the now-useful hot-rod red that Tony had brandished on his suit. 

“That’s a negative, Cap. Last saw him heading towards Gillian’s lab, and then the killer bees all shut down. He’s probably just fanboying at all the stuff. Don’t worry ‘bout it Cap.” 

Clint was right, Steve knew that, but why did this sinking feeling in his chest always appear whenever something happened to Tony? 

(You love him like a brother you love him like a brother you love him li-) 

“I want you guys to destroy as many of those killer bees as you can. They may be deactivated now, but we have no idea if anyone else can, I don’t know, turn them back on.”

Natasha responded this time, her affirmation comforting. At least this part of the plan was working. 

They were big enough to be noticed, so Steve went through the area, smashing them with his shield, when all of a sudden a voice rang through the comms.

“Um, idk if this is a good time, but I’m, like, 78% sure my arc reactor isn’t working.”

And then everything went to shit. 

 

When Steve first learned of the arc reactor, he had been sitting in Fury’s room, still in awe by goddamn color photos when the Avengers initiative was proposed to him in a manila folder. 

(Fury, for all his rough patches, was a sweetheart deep down, and the paper folder had been his way of telling Cap the world hadn’t changed all too much from what he remembered - but then again, they were sitting in an invisible spaceship in the sky, so…).

“Earth’s mightiest heroes, huh? Why’re you telling me this again?”

Fury had given him that look, the one he gave people when they said dumb stuff, but held down his trademark sigh to give a dignified response.

“Because the other day I saw you rip a door off its hinge like it was candy, Rogers. That’s why. And you’ve got the moral standards for the job. Of course, unless you’re harboring some secret murderous intentions?” 

Steve had turned a fiery shade of red at the first line. He had been really hoping nobody saw that fiasco. 

“No sir. No - I, no murderous intentions.”

Fury just raised an eye.

“That’s what I thought. Read through that Rogers. Those’ll be your potential teammates, you know, if the DOD or the DOJ actually approve all of this.” 

He should’ve probably been more worried at the time, but he was too busy skimming through the files. Russian spy, bird-men, (no joke, that was Clint’s description; either Fury was high as a kite when he wrote this or it had been some elaborate joke on Rogers, he still isn’t sure), green rage-monster stood out particularly more than the others, but in the end, it was Tony Stark, billionaire genius Tony Stark, who caught his eye the most.

Not much in the file, no surprise there. Even in the 1940s being rich meant getting your way, and this man screamed private. Three months in Afghanistan, comes out with a changed way of life and the Iron Man suit. And then there was the arc reactor.

A pacemaker, a battery, whatever it was, it enraptured Steve the second he heard about it. There was a grainy picture in the file, and he could barely make it out, but there it was, the light blue glow coming from his chest, and even Steve, 1940s, ancient Steve, knew this was future-tech kind of stuff. And his fingers, god they ached when he got to see it in person, ached to draw them, trace their bright curves on canvas, trace Tony’s face with them. 

It pulsed so brightly under his shirt, and he had struggled to tear his eyes away from them, to tear his eyes away from something so beautiful. It was beautiful when Tony had been slinging insults at him (insults he had deserved, god he had said such awful things), beautiful when Tony would fly so brilliantly into the air, beautiful when Tony was so enraptured by his work he’d forget to shave or comb his hair or any other kind of human decency (which he seemed to lack anyways on a daily basis). 

Its blue was beautiful, until it wasn’t.

It scared Steve for the first time when Tony had been laid so roughly on the ground by the Hulk, suit battered and arc reactor flickering until it went out. The portal was closed, the nuke was gone, the Chitauri were defeated, but the arc reactor was quiet, dull, and Steve had never been more scared in his life.

(Don’t go don’t go you can’t everyone goes please-)

The blue fired back on. Tony woke up. Made a flippant joke or two. Shot winks at Bruce at the randomest times and laughed as loud, hell louder, as everyone else. 

And then, deep into the night, tucked into a warm comforter and holding a mug of hot cocoa, Steve found him crying in the kitchen, all those layers of smug and arrogant stripped away until nothing was left but him. 

Steve sat down next to him, a newly-acquired mint chocolate chip ice cream carton in one hand and two spoons in the other, and ignored Tony’s half-hearted glare and indignant complaints until the man resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to budge. They didn’t speak, which would probably have made his SHIELD-appointed therapist weep, but neither of them were any good with that stuff, that feeling stuff, so Tony rested his head on his shoulder (tentatively, but then relaxed) and they ate chocolate chip ice cream and Steve just knew.

He’d known, and nothing was the same and everything was the same, but there was no doubt in his head that even if he didn’t know, this would’ve have stopped his heart.

Because Tony’s arc reactor wasn’t working, it was the Chitauri invasion all over again, and all he could manage to say was, “Did he really just say idk?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil Coulson doesn't complain and Fury likes to let people think he doesn't know everything.
> 
> (Spoiler Alert: He does).

Once upon a time, Phil Coulson was just an average middle-aged man with an average job (well, partially average) living an average life in which he did astoundingly average things. 

Then a few gods came crashing onto Earth. 

But hey, he’s not complaining.

Wasn’t complaining when he got to meet Captain America, that’s for sure. Nor was he complaining when said American Hero Idol God And Many More Positive Adjectives signed his Captain America trading cards. 

Didn’t complain when his case reports got a bit bigger. Alien invasions tend to do that.

Nor when he had to start answering to hundreds of complaints from storekeepers about a weirdly attractive blonde man ranting about how goddamn expensive their products are because “back in my day milk was only 4 cents this is an outrage!” 

Really tried not to when Stark gave everyone pet robot horses for their free desires. 

And then said robots turned decidedly evil. 

And decimated a hot-dog stand. 

Phil’s favorite hot-dog stand. 

(He thinks all the yoga and meditation and head-banging really cleared his mind that day, else the Avengers would be no more). 

But now?

Now he’s complaining.

Because for the past two hours, a team of usually respectable and badass people have decided to play the hospital version of Are We There Yet with Phil starring the main role of Exasperated Parent. 

“Did the doctors say anything?” 

“Yeah, is he okay?”

“Was the spare arc reactor damaged?”

 

“Pepper put it on. Did she put it on right?” 

Was that a headache, he wondered sardonically.

“Like I said before,” for the hundredth time, “Tony is still being checked over and when the doctors find out anything about his condition, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.” 

They calmed down slightly - except for Steve of course, who still looked like someone set his puppy on fire - and Phil sighed, sinking into the armchair sofa a bit more.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t worried. He had unknowingly chewed through his nails over the course of the past two hours, and it took far too much effort to hide the disarray his mind had been thrown in the second he heard of what happened to Stark. 

Gillian, supervillain of the week (if he even qualified for such a title, considering how easy it had been to disarm him), had inadvertently created an electrical signal which interfered with the reactor, and when the Avengers found Tony unconscious in the middle of Gillian’s lab, arc reactor flickering off, Thor had immediately flown back to Tony’s lab, where a horrified Pepper and eager-to-help Jarvis dismantled the suit and replaced the reactor with a spare. At least, that was the official report Coulson gave to Fury. He decided to leave out the part where Steve threw a car at Gillian’s prison-escort SHIELD truck (thank Thor he missed). 

The arc reactor was tricky business, and he knew in the end nobody would really be able to tell what might happen except for Stark himself.

He’s not quite sure what fear feels like, but it’s probably this. 

 

Fury sometimes takes pity on Coulson. One of his best, no doubt, and the man could handle chaotic situations with a calm and practiced ease he finds himself almost envious of. But every man has a breaking point, and Fury’s not all too surprised the Avengers were Coulson’s. The man’s case reports seemed to consist of more apologies than actual events ever since he got assigned to the bunch. 

When Stark’s robot pets turned evil? The man’s case report was wet with tear-stains. He also omitted the hot-dog stand destruction, but Fury let it slide. He had bigger things on hand than flying ketchup bottles. 

But they had bonded, despite Phil’s best attempts at professionalism. Friends or family, the line had been blurred, and a hit on the team was a hit on Phil. So perhaps it was Phil’s job to question Gillian. Perhaps it was his job to work with SI and handle any public and financial disasters that would result from this morning’s fight. And perhaps it was Phil’s job to monitor the SHIELD agents sweeping the damage zone and clearing out all the killer bees. 

But in the end, Phil’s biggest job was to keep that mess of a group together, and maybe even himself, in a hospital waiting room. Fury could handle the rest. 

Oh, and if Phil ever asked, Fury had absolutely no idea about that car Captain America decided to play frisbee with. No idea at all. 

 

Steve was aggressively bouncing a ball back and forth from the wall to his hand, a clear crack already visible on the poor wall, and Clint was hanging from the fan playing darts. Natasha and Bruce luckily had the mental capacity to not destroy the hospital waiting room, which Phil decided to take as a sign of hope, but the amount of paperwork he was about to drown in because of Idiot 1 and 2 made his head spin. It had been three hours, and his legendary patience, already worn so thin, was on the verge of snapping, when a man in a white coat strode into the room.

The doctor, a friend SHIELD Coulson knew only by name, decided to pretend not to notice the destruction that had taken place and faced Coulson, who had already stood up and headed over. 

“Any word, Dr. Brenner?” 

He tried to peak at the man’s clipboard, but it was securely against his chest, as if someone had warned him about the behavior he was about to face. 

“He has a concussion, not too severe but enough that we’d like to check up on it more, and a sprained rib and wrist. Besides a few cuts and bruises, I’d say he’s perfectly healthy, but I’m afraid that’s not the problem. The arc reactor in his chest isn’t anything like we’ve seen before, and I can’t say it with any certainty, but its palladium core might cause some complications in the future.”

Before the Avengers could get a word in, Phil entered, grateful this was the only problem.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Brenner. And don’t worry about the palladium. We’ve faced this problem before. We have a compatible replacement back in SHIELD in case anything like this ever happened.”

He could practically hear Steve’s relief. 

Before Dr. Brenner could continue, a nurse entered the room, eyes bright.

“Doctor? The patient is awake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kudos and hits! It's really motivated me, and I'm really excited to continue this story.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony wakes up. 
> 
> He lets his walls crumble, and Steve's there to catch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not too proud of the chapter, and it's a bit short, but I hope you like it! Thank you for all the hits and kudos!

“...and two McFlurrys. You know what I’m talking about, the ones with the Oreos. Wait, and a cookie too. Uh, duh, of course they’re all for me. No, I don’t know my cholesterol or blood sugar, why would I need to know that?”

Pause.

“Pepper? Pepper, you still there?” 

“I’m gonna take that silence as a no.” 

Tony startled, almost falling off the bed before turning around to see Steve standing at the doorway, arms crossed in feigned nonchalance and bright blue eyes sparkling with amusement. The playfulness looked almost forced, but Tony didn’t mind. A sad Steve meant a sad Tony, and if he saw watery blue eyes on the Captain his heart might explode. 

“My Star-Spangled Man, here at last.”

Steve rolled his eyes at the nickname, but it was half-hearted and with no malice, and Tony decided that if almost dying got Stevie to put up with his teasing, it wasn’t all that bad. 

“‘Least it wasn’t Captain Crunch.” 

Tony smiled at that, more genuine this time, but before he could respond the rest of the Avengers appeared at the doorway, grinning at him.

“Tony! How’re you feeling?”

Clint, enthusiastic as always. It was loud and annoying and Tony loved it. 

He couldn’t remember anyone caring. Not before the Avengers. 

“Not bad, considering my heart stopped working for a while.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but then again, Tony was never very good with people, not the way he was on camera or in front of an audience, and the pained expression that dawned on Steve’s face made him realize it probably wasn’t the best thing to say. Tony tried to say something, anything, that could mend the situation, but Natasha quickly butt in.

“Hey, Tony, glad you’re okay, but I’ve gotta go now. Clint and I have got a thing we’ve got to take care of for SHIELD, so see you back at the tower.”

Clint blinked, looking at her in confusion.

“We’ve got a thing? I don’t reme-”

A well-placed elbow to the guts seemed to have jarred his memory, for he forced a pained smile and threw a random excuse before traipsing away with Natasha. Bruce seemed to come to the same realization as Clint did, for he as well bid Tony a farewell with the purpose of a SHIELD-assigned thing, adding a quick “glad you’re alive”, before dragging Thor away.

And then the room was completely empty save for Steve and Tony.

Steve seemed less worried about everyone’s odd and sudden disappearance, and before Tony could voice any concern he had strode over, determined, and pulled him in for a hug and Tony’s mind just froze.

Tony’s chin rested on Steve’s head, his hair tickling his neck, and Steve’s arms were wound around his chest, tugging him in until almost every part of them were touching. His breath was cinnamon and mint and a little blood and just Steve, warm against his neck, and Tony sighed, relaxing into his grip and resting his arms on his back.

“I was so… so scared, Tony.”

His voice was barely a whisper, but Tony heard just fine.

“Your arc reactor scares me so much.”

It should have hurt, the comment, and a part of Tony felt the sting, but Tony understood. Every day, when he looked in the mirror at the blue light, he would feel proud and strong and determined and scared, and Tony understood.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered back.

Steve didn’t respond, didn’t move, just stood there, curled up into Tony’s sitting figure with his fingers resting on Tony’s wrist, every heartbeat eliciting a relieved sigh because Tony’s heart was fine now, he could feel it was fine, but what if it wasn’t? 

And Tony sat there and Tony let him. 

 

It was the small stuff, Tony would come to realize. The cup of coffee always waiting for him at the kitchen counter after a particularly long bender in the workshop, waking up in his bed when he could have sworn he fell asleep on a couch or working on some prototype or some other uncomfortable position. The small smile he’d throw Tony’s way when he could sense the engineer was having a bad day, the rare one that he’d never see directed to another member, and then Tony would feel all tingly and warm and surprisingly not hate it. 

(The last time he’d felt anything like this, warm and safe and just happy he was sitting next to his mother in front of a piano, too transfixed on the smile on her face as she played to actually play himself, and they sat there for what felt like hours, sunlight trickling away until only a single candle left the room lit. They’d never been closer.

The next day, Howard and Maria went for a drive and never came back.) 

It scared him at first. He had walls miles tall, and the last time he let them down, the person tore out his heart - literally. 

(Don’t think of Obie - Obadiah - don’t think of him or you won’t know what to do and you’ve already lost control of everything else.)

But Steve wasn’t Obadiah. He wasn’t Natalie Rushman (not Natasha, he tells himself, because sometimes he can’t sleep because of her and she can’t be Natasha), he wasn’t the hundreds of people who saw an opportunity or a goldmine and not a boy. He was Steve, and for once in his life Tony didn’t push down his feelings or silence his heart or any of the other idiot stuff he usually pulled when he would feel something, anything.

He just woke up one morning, took one look at Steve, and decided he was in love.


End file.
